Aspects of localized gravity around the soft minima

n-dimensional pure gravity theory can be obtained as the effective theory o f an n + 1 model (with noncompact extra dimension) where general n + I repa rametrization invariance is explicitly broken in the extra dimension. As wa s pointed out in the literature, a necessary consistency condition for havi ng a nonvanishing four-dimensional Newton constant is the normalizability i n the extra dimension of the zero mass graviton. This. in turn, implies tha t gravity localization is produced around the local minima of a potential i n the extra dimension. We study gravity in the neighborhood of the soft ("t hick") local minima. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.